Santos to Gremio… just a loan | Indio lands for a week | Ferguson comments on Robin negotiations

If any picture summed up how Andre Santos played, it’s the above. Unsure of what he’s supposed to be doing, a little bit silly and ultimately… pretty damn ugly.

Santos was a classic Arsene Wenger panic buy from two years ago. We found ourselves on the wrong end of a terrible United spanking and one of players the manager brought in was Brazil international Santos. On the face of it, I think most thought we had a bit of a deal on our hands. He started off in fairly average fashion. He looked a long way off the pace… but after about ten games he started to come into his own. He had a blinder against Chelsea and I think many felt he’d finally come good…

It wasn’t to be… he picked up an injury in Olympicos and when he returned, things were never the same again. He was over weight, out of position and breaking the law like the best of them. Outside of offences against football, he led the police on a wild chase round the m25 after being flashed speeding at a quite outrageous rate of knots.

Things came to a head against United when at half time, after a tragic performance, he thought it might be a good time to pick up the shirt of traitorous Robin Van Persie. He did it in front of the whole stadium… along with the cameras of the world. Quite honestly one of the worst examples of stupidity I’ve seen an out of form player partake in…

Anyway, after two years, Wenger has finally given up the fight to see him come good… Gremio want a piece… so he’s off. Good riddance. I know people like to play the ‘Oh, it’s a real shame it didn’t work out’… but I can’t see it like that. I’ve no love for him, I’m glad he’s gone. A big smile doesn’t do it for me when it comes to sport. I’m sure the players will be upset, fair enough, it’s a different type of relationship. For me, his laziness will be the abiding memory of his time here.

Let’s hope we can get rid of him in the summer for good…

Arsene Wenger has voiced his concerns about the rough treatment Jack Wilshere has been recieving of late.

“I just want the referee to give a foul when it’s a foul. I don’t want any special protection,”

“The referee is not a bodyguard, he is just a referee and you want him just to give a foul when it’s a foul.”

Can’t disagree there. Teams target Jack because he has a temper on him. I said in my match report yesterday that I was impressed by his maturity in dealing with the attacks he receives during the game. It’s nice that we have a player who just gets on with it, but eventually, someone has to put there hand up and ask when it’s going to stop.

The good news about the weekends knock is nothing serious. He’s going to be fighting fit for the weekends game. I’d like to think we could rest him, but, despite the excitement of Champions League clouding my reality of what the targets are… you have to say the FA Cup is out best chance of silverware. We should go all out to smash Blackburn early on… then take him off.

On the transfer front, Arsenal have given a trial to Brazilian youngster Indio. I’m not sure what’s going on, I haven’t heard too many of these children trials of late. PR quiet time? Or just not many good kids on the market? Anyway… he had a few comments.

“I’ll spend a week at Arsenal. It will be cool, I hope I enjoy it.

Good, good…

“Of course I have the dream of playing for a European club, but everything has its right time. It will be a good experience. I want to learn.”

Yep, yep, no one likes a smart ass… but what about Theo?

“I like him a lot. His style of play is very fast, which pleases me.”

You little creep… someone cancel his flight.

Staying on the Jack theme, two more stories that hit the newsfeeds are that he’s weighing into the ‘Save Gazza’ fund. Think what you like of the ex-Spurs star, seeing a grown man up on a stage crying his eyes out into hundreds of bystanders is pretty heartbreaking, the guy is on the way out if he doesn’t sort himself out soon, so it’s nice that people in his profession are mucking in to help out. The chances of any of it having a long term effect? Well… I wouldn’t be so morbid as to hazard a guess.

The other piece of news centres around Frimpong. He’s still not given up the ghost of having a career at Arsenal and has cited Mr Wilshere as his inspiration due to the injuries and bad luck he suffered on his way to stardom.

“The boss at Arsenal, Mr Wenger, told me to come here and get some games because there is no point sitting on the bench at Arsenal,”

I’m still unsure about whether he has a future at Arsenal. However, it seems like the Twitter nonsense has died down and maybe reality has set in that he isn’t the greatest thing to happen to world football since Pele. He loves Arsenal and he’d die for the cause. That’s a good start…

I read an interesting article about Paul Pogba yesterday in The Sunday Times. We all talk about Wenger losing players, but there’s been a lot of casual ignorance that Ferguson lost Paul Pogba (probably because United are smashing the league again) to Juventus. The Frenchman was kicked out amid rumours he was money grabbing, but the truth was he just wanted to play… now he’s playing, the fans in Italy are comparing him to Paddy V. Interesting because that’s the sort of midfielder we’re still totally desperate for. I caught a bit of the United game yesterday. Everton put up a bit of a fight but class held out again and Robin Van Persie was the difference with an assist and a goal. They’re a winning machine again and he’s the icing on the cake. Still, let’s not kid ourselves… Arsenal weren’t a Robin Van Persie away from the league.

Talking of Robin, anyone who doesn’t think Arsene Wenger is Arsenal overlord should take in this next snippet of an Alex Ferguson interview.

“I never thought we had a chance of getting Robin van Persie because I didn’t think Arsenal would sell to us.

“My discussions with Arsene were good but long, probably a couple of months. They realised that the lad wanted to leave. It was a matter of negotiating a price with Arsene.”

Arsene Negotiating the price… knowing Robin was leaving months before he did… not buying in a world class replacement. Amazing, because you know Ferguson would never have reciprocated.

There were some more interesting snippets…

“I never miss a training session. My observation is the most important part now.”

Arsene Wenger isn’t an observer, he runs the show. There was also this comment that threw a few people.

“There are members of my staff who have been with me for 20 years or more. That creates a loyalty for both sides – from me to them and from them to me.”

That doesn’t mean Ferguson has had the same back room team for 20 years. He changes his assistant regularly and he has grown his backroom team hugely over the last ten years. You’ll always keep certain people at the club, but keeping ideas fresh is the most important thing renewal offers a club. Wenger doesn’t have the balance there right…

Final bit… Sagna at centre back, yep, he was great, he looked dominant, aware and at ease. Does he look better than our other centre backs? After one game, yep. He’s a superb defender. I’m just not sure we should be banging the ‘change his position’ drum after one game. Not least because that puts a problem in at right back.

And we have £160 Million in cash now, £70 Million transfer fund…what makes you think change is on the way. We’re not scraping the bottom of the piggy bank now, so why do you think with new commercials we’ll suddenly start behaving like we want to compete?

Mate, do you know how desperate that is ? Failed at the last minute to buy Moutinho ? What if I said we bid 30 million for Hazard or Goetze, it means nothing.

Sigurdsen ? Dempsey ? Come on ffs.

We sold Van Persie/ Song, had already bought Podolski, added Cazorla and Giroud, even if you don’t think they’re good enough (having mentioned Sigurdsen and Dempsey you should be creaming yourself) it still shows that we’ve tried to change tact doesn’t it ?!

To Moutinho being on a plane and the two clubs failing to agree figures.

Why is it Keyser, if you’d be so kind as to stop deflecting, why is it that they re-signed Bale, up there (according to some) with Messi and Ronaldo, I don’t know about that but he’s the best player in the Premiership, and we sold Van Persie, Fabregas, Nasri and Song in 12 months?

Our management is weak.

It’s cowardly to blame Agents and other teams….as if it’s THEIR fault that they want players the quality of Nasri, Fabregas and Van Persie!!!

It’s our job to hold onto them!

Podolski? Not in any of those three’s bracket.

Giroud, not fit to lick RVP’s boots.

Cazorla, fantastic player, but at £12 Million…come on. We could have added him to what we had.

Wenger looks at the side and decides, what can i do to scrape fourth and bank a load of cash….that is his MO every year.

If we had Bale, we’d have cashed in on him by now….oh sorry…his agent and Madrid would have conspired to offer him staggering wages that poor old Arsenal just can’t compete with!!

HerveDeNerve, what does it matter if David Ornstein is reporting an almost done deal? How many almost done deals DON’T get reported? Keyser was saying if AW’s attempts at signing players don’t count and / or are laughed off, why should other teams’ attempts have more cred? The proof is in the pudding, no signing means just that. How do YOU measure intent anyway? Or loss?

Cesc Appeal, your have very little reason in the way you argue. You say things that you clearly think are self-evident. But they are not at all. You mention Bale to illustrate how Spurs really make an effort, the best player in the Premiership! (really?), and to give your arguement a little extra weight, you mention ‘some’ think he’s in the same league as Messi. No sane person thinks that surely? In fact you say yourself you don’t really think that either. So why bring Messi into it at all? Your argument is as thin after you bring Messi into it as it was before. Yet you use this pseudo proven point as a spring board for the inevitable ‘horrifically run club’ gambostyle statement. Then you make big googly eyes at anyone who doesn’t share your hysterical view point.

The bottom line is that nothing is going to change until Wenger goes. He is effectively the bouncer at the door who gladly and willingly keeps safe the board and owner sitting inside.

And what keeps this damaging cancer going? Well a nice fat pay check for Wenger and he gets to run the show. It’s a dream come true for him. That way the board don’t have to take any risks buying expensive players because they have proven to us over and over again that there is no interest in winning trophies – a CL position is all that is required.

The AKBs can repudiate the above till they go blue in the face – it changes nothing and until he goes these pointless preachers will continue to bark and dilute and deflect the main reason for failure of the last 8 years.

Winning nothing in eight years is not acceptable. There is no merit in fourth – no matter how you dress it up especially as all we do with the money is waste it on so many useless and unproductive player wages.

Cesc appeal is relevant and keyser irrelevant if not irreverent. Even when we did replace we tried replacing jewels with trinkets .all said Wonkie has shat in his pants trying to pee.
Out with the geezer who does not have a minimal shame to vamoose when exposed as a disgrace